“Thus secure in the possession of their lands,” says Champollion-Figeac, “the entire sacerdotal class was like a family with a vast heritage transmissible, according to known conditions, from generation to generation. It was this right of inheriting the lands that necessarily rendered their office hereditary, because the nature of their functions determined the part of the land inherited by each member of the family, and on this fundamental principle the whole constitution of the sacerdotal caste of Egypt depended.” The hereditary transmission of each sacerdotal function, and the part of the landed property attached to this function, could only take effect in favor of one of the children, and probably the oldest, as in the royal family. The other children remained to be supported by the head of the family, or easily found a means of subsistence in the perquisites of the numerous sacred or civil employments. The number of the temples, their rich endowments and rents, spoken of in the Rosetta inscription, explains how so large a number of priests could live at their ease. To this income must be added the subsidies from the royal treasury, and the fees of the numerous salaried functions which embraced every part of the public administration, apart from the military sphere. But in Egypt, as elsewhere, families sometimes became extinct for want of descendants, and thus a new path was opened for capacity without employment. To form an exact idea of the influence exercised by the priesthood over Egyptian society, it is necessary to enter into some details upon their manners and kind of life, the duties which occupied them, and the extent of their knowledge of all kinds which they made use of to promote the civilization of their country. Plutarch relates that the Egyptian priests abstained from mutton and pork, and on days of purification they ordered their meat to be served without salt, because, among other reasons, it whetted the appetite, inciting them to eat and drink more. He says: “They have a well apart, where they water their bull Apis, and carefully abstain from drinking the Nile water, not that they regard it as unclean, on account of the crocodiles, as some suppose--on the contrary, there is nothing the Egyptians reverence so much as the Nile--but they think its effect is to render them more corpulent. They are unwilling for Apis to become too fat, or to become so themselves, but wish their souls to be sustained by slight, active, nimble bodies, and that the divine part within may not be oppressed and weighed down by the burden of what is mortal. “In the city of Heliopolis, or the City of the Sun, those who worship the divinity never carry any wine into the temple, because it is not suitable to drink in the presence of their lord and king. The priests take it in small quantities, but they have several days of purification and sanctification, during which they abstain entirely from wine, and do nothing but study and teach holy things.”